Many users of the global information network are often required to fill out multiple and varied forms to do business with a variety of companies doing electronic commerce, or contact companies or regulatory agencies for a variety of reasons. For example, a user applying for a credit card may have to complete a form with the same information he or she just filled in on a different form used to order some goods or services from a different company. Those users applying for jobs and completing application papers or security clearance papers may find themselves completing various forms over and over again using the same information, but having to reenter it because the format of the forms are different.
Electronic commerce over the global information network relies heavily on forms and in some cases, up to several dozen forms may have to be filled out. Such forms may include initial customer set up checklists, customer credit forms, and follow-up forms, and even return e-mails to be sent back to the customer. Regulatory agencies also rely heavily on many different forms for applications or information gathering.
Historically such forms were typically filled out manually and placed in a file folder. Little information was available on-line or in a data processing system. All follow-up action on a particular case required access to this file. Locating the file was often a problem leading to time lost and wasted in searching for the file. Additionally, a manual file system also resulted in incomplete files due to forms not being placed in the file, or forms improperly or incompletely filled out.
More recent prior art systems are focused mainly on internal systems. U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,577 discloses a data processing system including automated forms generation that uses data displayed at a predetermined position on a data terminal display screen, and a data processing function selector, to automatically retrieve a pre-established form stored in a data processing system. In one embodiment, the form includes a number of uncompleted fields. The data processing system retrieves at least one datum from at least one data field displayed on the screen, and automatically inserts the data in a predetermined uncompleted field of the form. The partially or fully completed form is then stored for later retrieval, updating and printing by the data processing system.
These types of systems are now common on intranet based processing within companies, but they are complicated systems generally requiring personnel with significant technical expertise to install, create the forms, and set up the mapping of the information to the forms. Also, a customer or applicant first approaching the company with his or her personal information must start by completing the companies set of forms. The process must be repeated over and over again each time that the person goes to a new company. Such a method is extremely time consuming, further ties up the host computer resources, and often results in numerous data entry errors. This further results in delays in processing the customer cases and an accompanying tendency to act on incomplete or improperly compiled information.
It is therefore the object of this invention to supply multiple users of the global information network with a convenient method of automatically completing multiple forms for multiple companies or regulatory agencies, by filing out the information once on any form presented on the user's web browser. It is also an object of this invention to allow the user the opportunity to update their individual information automatically when they are completing a new form on their web browser. It is a further object of this invention to allow multiple companies or regulatory agencies who do electronic commerce or other applications over the global information network a simple method that can be implemented by non technical staff to transfer their forms to automatically filling electronic forms. And also to offer multiple users a convenient way of entering information into all the data fields on their many forms automatically.